Is it just me or are the AS marks really harsh this year?

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Did anyone else's OCR history papers get given 1 mark below the grade boundaries? People I know have been getting 59, 69, 79 UMS but not the top grade A..? They are going to be busy with remarks this year.

They probably do it so that they get the money :tongue:

However, remember that examiners are told that if you are one mark/UMS from a grade boundary, they are meant to look through your paper and award you this mark :smile:

Reply 241

turnip storm

Original post by anonymousecheese

could i possibly get ABB and do psychology
i got A-psychology C-biology D-chem D- english lit
i just feel so dumb because i worked really hard :banghead:

Yes you can! Definitely drop one of your subjects - i'd personally suggest dropping Chemistry - and work extremely hard! Don't rely to much on resits, especially since there are no more January exams, and due to how hard A2 exams are :wink:

All i can say is, if you hope to move Biology up, get revising now! So much to learn (I was with OCR, it may be different for other boards!)! :tongue:

Reply 242

Dilzo999

I know exactly what you mean, I luckily somehow achieved AAAC, however one of my best friends only got BCCD and I was feeling so sorry for him as I know he did so much revision and worked really hard for his grades. There were also people all around me getting Cs and Bs who I'd expected to have gotten A's!

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 243

The Morrigan

From my personal experience (as well as that of others I have seen since on TSR) the AQA English Literature AS was marked very harshly. I got an A* for my coursework but yesterday I found out that this had been reduced to a grade B, why I don't know until my college gets a report from AQA next week. My exam didn't go that well, I was expecting like a D for it, but I got an E, so that combined with my lowered Coursework grade meant that I got a D overall. I'm probably going to resit it because I want to do English at Uni. It's a similar situation for the rest of my class, E grades when they were expecting C grades and stuff like that, I don't know anyone who got higher than a D, although I haven't yet found anyone whose coursework was lowered by two whole grade boundaries like mine was. It was the AQA course that focused on the literature of world war one, with the war poems of Wilfred Owen being the focus of the exam. Thankfully I did well in all my other subjects (BBB)

Reply 244

Katie_96

I think they were a lot harsher than they have been in past years.

I have two friends that got AAAA, but even they were predicted widely 100%s in modules and they only just got As.

I was predicited As and I got AABB, with As in maths and further maths and Bs in chemistry and physics, I was pretty close with chemistry but I was predicted over 90 and I worked so hard, I don't know what happened. Physics wasn't even close and I was predicted over 90 in that too.

It's not the end of the world because my grades are not terrible, but I worked so hard and I don't understand how I'm going to get A*AA next year if I can't manage to get AAAA at AS :-( good bye cambridge hopes

Reply 245

Smko

Original post by silkysmoothpro

Yeah i did OCR Too! I got an A in one paper and a C in the sources wbu ?

Reply 246

I like school

Original post by livinglife123

Awwh what did you get for it? I think mines worth a remark tbh I can't be bothered to resit it.

I actually did get an A but seriously that was the hardest paper I have ever sat, all the practices I did I breezed but that one I felt like it was weird questions and the second one was about one of the leaders right? (can't remember which one) and I just felt that it was super specific and odd. The other paper I did horrendously on though, felt like a hard year for history.

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Reply 247

MattDowse

BDDU - Yeah they were harsh =(

Reply 248

anonymousecheese

Original post by turnip storm

All i can say is, if you hope to move Biology up, get revising now! So much to learn (I was with OCR, it may be different for other boards!)! :tongue:

thank you so much for the encouragement
id drop chem but i cant stand english lit :angry:

i will definetly start revising now!
:smile:

Reply 249

xxrebeccabexixx

hey, I just got my a levels back and heading off to uni.

just to let you all know that my AS last year was very bad compared to what i was capable of. i got ABCD and dropped the C.

my whole school pretty much did bad aswell, but its not because of the harsh marking, its because the jump from GCSE to AS level is so large! thats the reason why year 12s generally do badly.

and to let you all know, AS grades dont really matter! better start softening up your teachers because the predictions is what counts! with grades ABD I got predicitons ABB which was enough to get all 5 offers from universities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds! I was even offered grades AAB, even though my predicitons wern't that!

through retakes and re-thinking my revision stratagy, my results yesterday were AAA. so its very important to remember that its not the end of the world!! I went from a very low D to an A.

and year 13 is easier than year 12. take year 12 and your AS results as a learning curve. you spent year 12 trying to figure out how the examiners do or dont like things, time to put it into practice in year 13!

GOOD LUCK EVERYONE FOR NEXT YEAR!! :biggrin:

Reply 250

turnip storm

Original post by anonymousecheese

thank you so much for the encouragement
id drop chem but i cant stand english lit :angry:

i will definetly start revising now!
:smile:

Haha, if you find Lit worse than Chem then drop that instead :smile:

I was just going on my own preference and the fact that Lit might be a little easier as i think it has less exams (AQA does anyway)? :tongue:

Reply 251

carpe diem 123

Original post by Deziah

Anyone else shocked with their F322 result? I went through the mark scheme and I calculated that I'd lost 5-10 which would be around 135 UMS. The grade boundaries were pretty high so I thought maybe they'd been a little lenient with the mark scheme. Turns out I've lost 20 marks and I've got 117 UMS. I'm not going to cry about it, and in all fairness I'm no marking expert so I easily could have miscounted - but I really don't understand where I went wrong. I worked really hard to know my chemistry inside and out, but I still lost 20 marks. I got higher in exams that I wasn't as confident in, and it just shows how deceiving A-level exams can be.

Exactly the same here! The exam went perfectly; there were no areas I felt I lost any significant marks at all. Yet I get my results back and it works out I got 83/100. Where did I lose 17 marks?! I have a feeling they have made the mark schemes really narrow; putting in rediculously pedantic things so as to catch out people in order to overalls reduce everyone's score.

Script back and a remark is in order here.

Reply 252

inneedofhelpp

i was predicted an A for economics for both papers; markets in action and global economy and was getting As all year but some how managed to get a B and a C

Did anyone else experience unexpected results in economics OCR??

Reply 253

Robbie242

Original post by inneedofhelpp

yes! I got a B in F582 economics... I expected a high A

Reply 254

L'Evil Fish

I agree... There's a crackdown :frown:

At least we know to work harder now :emo:

Reply 255

Robbie242

Original post by L'Evil Fish

I agree... There's a crackdown :frown:

At least we know to work harder now :emo:

This may be the case for you but for people like me I literally gave everything into that econ exam so simply saying work harder now is a bit of generalisation :tongue:

Reply 256

inneedofhelpp

Original post by Robbie242

yes! I got a B in F582 economics... I expected a high A

i ended up with a C only 1 ums off a B

im in a dilema whether to get them both remarked cus with both F581/2 i thought i was guaranteed an A and even a high A on F581

Reply 257

Robbie242

Original post by inneedofhelpp

i ended up with a C only 1 ums off a B

im in a dilema whether to get them both remarked cus with both F581/2 i thought i was guaranteed an A and even a high A on F581

Ah it sucks, the stupid thing is the boundaries were so high, do OCR just like to make over 70% of the cohort get below expected grades by setting high boundaries for reasonably tough exams. I bet the markscheme was also picky as always... Luckily I sat
F581 in jan and got 84ums which combined with F582 make me scrape an A. I do feel very sorry for you though. :frown:

Reply 258

silkysmoothpro

Original post by Smko

Yeah i did OCR Too! I got an A in one paper and a C in the sources wbu ?

We did the 1846-94 Gladstone and Disraeli paper and the 1054-1130 First Crusade. Everyone did really well on the Gladstone paper (i got 100% UMS wtf!!) but we thought it was the hardest. The crusade paper was the problem where no one seemed to get an A grade, just 1 below the grade boundary even though that was supposed to be the strong paper!!

Reply 259

L'Evil Fish

Original post by Robbie242

This may be the case for you but for people like me I literally gave everything into that econ exam so simply saying work harder now is a bit of generalisation :tongue:

Don't mess up calculations! :wink: